


Pull the Handle

by Orockthro



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Assignment Six, Challenge: Element Flash, Episode Tag, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:31:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3532874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve lost. But that’s what makes gambling fun, Sapphire said it herself. The game thrives on repeat customers and playing the odds with the understanding that losses are anticipated, but that there is always still <i>hope</i>. He pulls the coin from his pocket and looks at it from the dim light of the oppressive concrete box he’s in. He can sense Diamond not far away. He’s drawing her attention; he’ll have to move fast.</p><p>  <i>(Or, a short post Assignment 6 fic for Element Flash)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Pull the Handle

**Author's Note:**

> For the Element Flash prompt, "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory," which I took fairly loosely.

Diamond wears a new face every time he sees her, but Silver always recognizes her. It’s something about the way she stands, or the way she stares right through him, as if he were one of the more gaseous elements. Today her hair is black and piled up on her head, and her eyes are dark and shadowed. He blinks into existence, and then blinks at her.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

Silver doesn’t know. He ought to know. He’s a specialist, after all. He ought to know lots of things. But his mouth works open and closed. “I haven't the foggiest.”

“You mean you weren’t briefed?”

“I mean, I haven’t the foggiest.” He’s pretty sure he wasn’t briefed, either, but he’s not sure he wants to admit that just yet. He doesn’t like what it means. Or doesn’t mean. He’s not sure about much at all, it seems.

He sits down on the bottom stair of the claustrophobic concrete structure he’s in. There’s no sky here, only gray concrete, then lighter gray concrete, and blue painted steel handrails that are flaking down to a gray base. It’s a council flat, built in 1969. He hasn’t the knack for spot analysis that Sapphire has, but he can glean the basics. He’s always been more malleable than Steel when it comes to his abilities. And then he remembers Steel, remembers Sapphire too, remembers that horrible service station and those _things_  inside with them.

“Any dinosaurs around here, by chance?”

Diamond looks at him like he’s lost his mind. Maybe he has. “What are you on about?” That’s Diamond. Sharp tongued, sharp dressed. Sharp.

“This isn’t the triassic period, then?”

“Does this look like the triassic period to you? And what sort of question is that, anyhow?”

It certainly looks like a block of industrially made council flats. He reaches down to touch the edge of the staircase; concrete with embedded rebar. It feels like a block of industrially made council flats, too. “Not especially. But I’ve had a rough day, it’s bound to rattle the old noggin. I don’t suppose you’ve run into Sapphire out here, have you? Or even Steel?”

Diamond cranes her neck up to look past him at the set of half open windows at the top of the stairs. He can’t sense a time break, but it makes sense that there is one. Diamond is who they send out for the delicate matters; she’s surgical in a way the rest of them aren’t. Hopefully his odd entrance hasn’t disturbed the balance.

“No.” And then, in his mind, _Something happened_. It’s not a question. Diamond knows these things. It’s her knack; crystal clarity.

 _Transient Beings_.

Her eyes flash. Not like Sapphire’s of course. No one has eyes like Sapphire.

_Sapphire and Steel?_

He winces. It’s cold out, probably mid November. Nothing like how it was at the service station at the side of the road, with its summer storms and hot night breezes. He runs a hand across the crumbling edge of the stair and tries to imagine how much time has passed. Perhaps he was stuck in some liminal space for a time and only just now got out. _Captured_.

“A true loss,” Diamond says. Her voice, just like her face, is different with each body she chooses to wear. Just as sharp, though. “I suppose it had to happen eventually with those two. They took such risks. Steel pushed her too hard.”

Silver bristles. “We’re not all of us so precise as you, Diamond. And they’re not lost yet.”

Diamond freezes in place, head cocked to the side as if she is listening to something from afar. In a way she is. Silver recognizes the stance; she’s being debriefed. “They are lost to us. Completely. They underestimated Time and its powers of persuasion over the Transient Beings and now they have become just as trapped in the past. There is nothing to be done; it is their fate.”

She dismisses him then, starts up the stairs to deal with her own assignment. He listens to the heels of her shoes clack up and reverberate across the concrete. Clip clip. Clip clip. A heart beat. A moment in time that will never, should never, exist again.

He was so sure it would be alright. It was always alright with Sapphire and Steel. If one of them wasn’t able to find a way out, the other was, and then if both of them ran amuck of something foul, Silver was there to bail them out. That was the way of things. Only Silver is here, and they are somewhere else. Some _when_  else. Defeated at their moment of hubris.

They’ve lost.

He puts his head in his hands, wipes his face, and stands up. His suit jacket is wrinkled, so he smoothes it out of habit, tries not to think of Steel mimicking the motion, and puts his hands in his pockets. His fingers brush a quarter, an artifact from the odd little gambling machine in the front entrance of that damned service station. It sings to him, and Silver smiles.

They’ve lost. But that’s what makes gambling fun, Sapphire said it herself. The game thrives on repeat customers and playing the odds with the understanding that losses are anticipated, but that there is always still _hope_. He pulls the coin from his pocket and looks at it from the dim light of the oppressive concrete box he’s in. He can sense Diamond not far away. He’s drawing her attention; he’ll have to move fast.

He makes a fist, envelops the little piece of metal in his flesh, and closes his eyes. It’s easy to remember the slot machine. He imagines it as it was in the service station, pushed against the back wall and lit under orange fluorescent light. Three gems, the jackpot, that should do it. He imagines his hand reaching out and pulling the handle. It takes force, and he pulls hard. Something catches, Silver’s ears pop, and he tastes summer rain.

He opens his eyes.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know I stopped when I got to the good part, but I think that's what the show excelled at, so just consider it me following tradition. ;)


End file.
